


The Dwelling Night

by proser132



Category: Meitantei Conan | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: M/M, Night, Pandora - Freeform, Romance, dwelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 05:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/pseuds/proser132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three shot. KaiShin. Brief moments were all they had, but dwelling on dreams is sometimes enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Liar

 

_I’m not calling you a liar – just don’t lie to me_

  
‘Why are you doing this?’

Kaito paused on the railing, the howling wind like a chorus of banshee in his ears, the elusive Mandel’s Spinel still burning like triumph in his pocket. Through the wind’s ferocity he could still hear Conan-kun’s awkward shuffling behind him, his eyes a determined drill in-between the vertebrae of Kaito’s spine; he hated when people asked him that. Did they expect him to say  he _enjoyed_ himself, or that he got off on breaking the law? Yeah, he smirked through his heists, and _maybe_ baiting Nakamori-keibu was something he looked forward to when writing his notices, but the law was the _law_. He wouldn’t break it if he thought he had a choice.

‘Kid.’

Not that he could breathe a word of that to _Tantei-kun_. He didn’t know who the shrunken brat really was, or what his connection to the spirited away Kudou Shinichi may be, but he was not risking his life-story on what appeared to be, for all the world, a _seven-year-old._ He stood up, leaning into the wind to maintain balance on the thin rail, and opened his mouth.

‘The truth, please,’ Conan-kun said tiredly, neatly derailing Kaito’s plan to just say something cocky and disappear into the night.

The words wouldn’t have had any power over him, _none_ , had it not been for the weariness there – so tired, sounding more a fifty-year-old man than a child, shattering once and for all the illusion of youth that Conan-kun had worn as effectively as Kaito wore his own cape.

It had nothing to do with how Conan looked, perhaps, a bit more like Kudou-meitantei than Kaito was used to explaining away by shadows and reflective surfaces.

‘That’s more _your_ style, Tantei-kun,’ Kaito said slowly.

The diminutive Conan shook his head and leaned forward, as if to shove aside his weariness and height and _intimidate_ the truth out of Kaito. ‘You have no idea,’ he said, his voice much lower than a child’s voice had the right to be. ‘Why do you do this?’

Kaito paused a moment, studying Conan. Beneath them the faint cries and shouts of policemen, still bungling about in Kaito’s traps, sounded like drums, ticking away seconds as they got closer and closer to the roof. There were so many things he could say here, he realised, and Conan-kun would never know. He could speak the truth, the absolute truth that tried to form behind his lips even though his brain didn’t yet know the words, and Conan would assume it a lie; he could say he enjoyed it, no more, and still the detective would dismiss it.

In the end, he went with the simple answer. ‘Because I must.’

Conan-kun, against expectations (when was he ever with them?), nodded as if that made sense and turned to go. The shoes that had more than once left Kaito with bruises in unacceptable places sounded loudly despite the wind.

‘Tantei-kun?’ Kaito said, surprised. Conan didn’t pause in his steady trek towards the roof access. ‘Conan-kun?’ Nothing.

Then, as if he was drawing it out of Kaito the further he stepped away, an anger rose, and he shouted just as the wind lulled –

‘Kudou-san!’

Conan-kun paused, then turned, his face a careful blank. Kaito flinched.

‘Please don’t call me that,’ Conan said in a disturbingly child-like voice. ‘Shinichi-onii-san is dead, and he’s never coming back. Besides,’ and his voice dropped again. ‘He was a better man than I. He stopped murderers from harming the innocent.’

The voice was joined with an alien sneer, both self-mocking and acerbic in the disfigurement of his childish features. ‘I just chase _thieves_.’

Kaito flinched again, but the words bubbled out despite his attempts to shut himself up, calling after Conan – Kudou – Tantei – Meitantei – oh, hell, the detective as he resumed his steady march towards the door.

‘When you’re your own age, come back!’ He shouted as the wind picked up again. The detective paused, but did not turn. ‘I might even give you the reason behind the truth, then.’

The detective threw up his hand, and made his own concession to Kaito – proof that he could be trusted, evidence that Kaito was not blindly placing his faith in a boy – man – who was undeserving.

‘Til then, Kuroba-kun,’ the detective said, and left. Kaito leapt into the night.

He never saw Conan-kun again.


	2. Thief

_I'm not calling you a thief - just don't steal from me_

Kaito grinned at the mob of policemen as they scrabbled below, pulling on people's faces and searching the roofs of nearby buildings. His assumptions had been correct, as they often were; he had so enjoyed crafting this particular trick, the creation of eleven doppelgangers, and making them appear (alongside his glorious self, of course) on the roofs around Ekoda. Even now the copies were leading the police on one merry chase after another, and as he soared towards the first checkpoint in his escape he smiled extra hard to counter the wild thumping of his heart and the shaking of his abdominal muscles.

He had been so close to capture, so close to failure that the sickly-sweet flavour still flooded his mouth. He had been in a _corner_ , with no smoke bombs, no cards, no _nothing_. It was sheer luck that one officer had tripped over his own feet and toppled the rest of them to the ground long enough for Kaito to leap past them and out the window. Sheer _luck_.

But the Silvern Blue, a clear, pale star sapphire set in a tiara, was still in his fist, and he was still free, so he relaxed. He would have actually stood a chance of capture had Conan-kun –

The train of thought smashed into itself and burst into smithereens, as it always did. Conan-kun hadn't been at a heist for almost a year -- four months to go, and it would be the anniversary of their last meeting. Either he had taken Kaito's parting words at face value, or...

No. It would have been all over the news if a child had been murdered, and the Black Organisation had no idea what -- or who -- Conan truly was. Meitantei-kun couldn't have been brought down by them, anyway. Not for ever. A few months, maybe.

Kaito landed silently atop the bridge, the darkness only relieved by himself and the faint, watery grey touch of the half-moon, and tried not to think of Meitantei-kun. It never helped his brain any, and he wasn't in the clear, yet; besides. It was frankly none of his business.

He pulled out the Silvern Blue as the moon broke through from full cloud-cover to mist, and held it up. There was a promising sparkle at the heart of the gem if he squinted, but he'd have to wait for a clearer night to find out for certain. The moonlight was too weak to penetrate even the pale Silvern Blue. He sighed, wrapped it in a square of silk he produced from his sleeve, and stuffed it unceremoniously in his pocket.

'Not it either, Kuroba-kun?'

Kaito froze in place, the gentle wind playing with the end of his cape. That voice... After so long...?

Kaitou Kid turned and faced Kudou Shinichi.

 

Shinichi watched Kid turn, watched his eyebrow rise at the police uniform he wore, and revelled in doing it without looking up from four feet below.

'You were the policeman who tripped,' Kid said in lieu of hello. Or Kuroba-kun, rather; it felt strange to call him Kid again after that night, eight months ago.

Shinichi nodded, unembarrassed. 'I'm not used to the height yet,' he admitted, and stepped closer. Kuroba-kun's face remained blank. 'That was a clever trick, the doppelgangers. How did you do it?'

'That'd be telling, wouldn't it?' Was the snappy answer, followed by a sigh. 'I'm glad to see you again, Meitantei-kun. Your extended absence left the police force...' A shrug. 'Wanting.' A step forward. 'I was concerned.'

That was more of an admission than Shinichi had been hoping for. 'Is that so?' He said, taking care to sound careless, and tutted. 'You shouldn't have worried so. You _did_ tell me to come back.'

'I did,' Kuroba-kun agreed lazily. He smiled lazily, too, as if the world would wait for him no matter his actions. Shinichi had to wonder if he was part of that world anymore, or if he was an impatient hangers-on, something Kuroba-kun was waiting on to fall away. After all, Kaitou Kid was someone Conan had chased, not Shinichi – no matter how he wanted to. 'But,' Kuroba continued with a long, measured look, 'I expected you in a _shorter_ time span.'

The faint stress was the only real nod Kuroba-kun made to their previous exchange, the one charged with anger and exhaustion. 'Can we speak here?' Shinichi asked, casting glances into corners lit only by the cars below and the sweeping of the police lights on the water.

'We're atop a _bridge_ , Meitantei-kun,' Kuroba said, sounding lightly amused. 'There are no snakes in the shadows here.'

Shinichi flinched at the phrasing; he'd had enough of the Black Organisation in the last two years to not know who that was. Kuroba-kun looked at him passively, but his his eyes sparked – the same spark, Shinichi was certain, that lit his own eyes when the last clue of a case fell into place. Kuroba nodded after a moment.

'So that's why.'

Three words, that was all, and suddenly Shinichi was hit with an epiphany – somehow, Kuroba had figured it out. Probably the same way Shinichi had for Kuroba: extensive research, studying his opponent's every move. It was written all over Kuroba's face, so eerily like his own, the apotoxin and the searching and the exhausting case loads and the awkwardness between himself and Ran, everything. He wished for a moment that he had never found an opponent so evenly matched.

_But would it be worth it to call him an opponent, then?_

Kuroba studied him, clearly waiting for something. When Shinichi didn't respond, the thief shrugged. 'I suppose you're here for the rest of the truth?'

He gave Shinichi a look that dried out his mouth, for reasons he didn't entirely understand.

'Here's part of it, then,' Kuroba-kun said, looking satisfied – so satisfied that Shinichi didn't even protest the 'part'. The thief leaned forward conspiratorially, and he swayed forward, too, drawn in. 'Here it is,' he whispered, and Shinichi could feel the words on his mouth.

'Only you, Meitantei-kun, could make that uniform look dashing,' Kuroba near-mouthed, and fell away from Shinichi in a flutter of doves, a shower of feathers. When Shinichi could see again, the top of the bridge was empty, but for a card lying innocently before him. He picked it up with shaking fingers that no amount of willpower could still; the three words on the paper didn't help any, either.

_Call me Kaito._


	3. Ghost

 

_I'm not calling you a ghost – just stop haunting me_

Shinichi held the paper away from him and into the light, as if it would reveal a watermark, a sigil, invisible ink. The paper's weight was too thick to let the light filter through, but still he tried, because the blue-white rose attached to and the words written on the paper couldn't possibly suggest what he thought it suggested.

            _When that unstoppable force_  
            _Meets the immovable wall, ___  
_I will step aside and sweep away ___  
_The kernel of the Sun's Rising_  
            _Before stealing the light._

_Kaitou Kid (doodle)_

A small card was stapled to the paper, and the handwriting filled it with dark blue, jerky slashes, as if the penman was nervous.

            **_Won't you accept my final invitation?_**

Shinichi removed the rose carefully and set it aside; the card he placed beside it, and then turned away, pointedly ignoring them and focussing on the problem at hand.

_The Silvern Blue wasn't Pandora._

It hadn't taken very long at all to find out what Kaito's _real_ mission was – no thief ever _returned_ what they stole unless it wasn't what they were looking for. Some intensive questioning of Haibara (who, even now looked at him suspiciously whenever Kaitou Kid was brought up) had revealed it easily enough; that didn't mean that the truth hadn't been a shock, however. A gem that could defeat mortality? Such a thing was so far beyond Shinichi's daily grit and grime of reality that he was almost glad Kid was seeking it out to destroy it – even if that meant breaking the law.

Of course, then he had realised Kaito had done the same for him; curiously, though, it hadn't felt like an intrusion. It just felt like an even-ing of the playing field; Kaito was not the criminal Shinichi had suspected, Shinichi was not the saint that had pursued Kaito in the public eye.

Perversely, he felt almost _relieved_  - Kaito wasn't a _real_ crook, just a hero with some unusual methods. Shinichi didn't really believe in heroes (as a child, he'd always preferred Holmes to the American superhero comics his friends treasured), but...

He picked the card up again, and smiled anyway. Not because it was right – but because it felt good.

 

Below Shinichi, sirens wailed brutally and spotlights darted about like fireflies in the cloudy night. Fog rolled in from the bay of Ekoda eerily, gleaming in the way Shinichi imagined stardust might, if such a thing existed; tiny shadows flitted in the mist, made smaller by his vantage point, and the police chased them around as if expecting Kid to pop out unguarded – even though the heist had not yet started.

The Old Apollo Hotel, having stood for years, was scheduled to be torn down tomorrow despite vast public criticism. In protest, the former owners were hosting a large gala in the derelict building, where they would be showcasing the Heart of Japan, a ruby the size of Shinichi's fist, hoping to draw Kid's attention and save the hotel.

In the end, the little poem Kid had sent had been disturbingly simple to decipher – so much so that even now, Shinichi turned it over in his head. The 'force' and the 'wall' clearly referred to the Hotel, so long as you connected it with 'the kernel of the Sun's Rising' – the Heart of Japan. He would sweep it away – much like the wrecking balls would the hotel in the morning, Shinichi supposed – and then step aside, escaping capture once more.

His arrogance would be infuriating, Shinichi thought with the deadpan tone he had developed as Conan, if he wasn't so endearing.

But parts of the poem made no sense, much like the rose had not; some subtle questioning around the department as they made ready had made it clear that the police had not received one. Whatever purpose Kaito-san had intended when he sent it to Shinichi was, so far, beyond him.

Even so, as he had exited his house earlier in the evening, the rose had glimmered faintly in the grey light of his hallway; and Shinichi had self-consciously picked it up, and even now wore it in the lapel of his coat, the wind teasing the petals softly under the searchlight-gleamed night.

He tucked the coat tighter around himself, and scanned the roof; it was indeed deserted, as he had meant for it to be. He had chosen a building a block away from the Hotel, and only a storey or so shorter; the buildings surrounding the hotel were blockaded, anyway, and he would have been forced to join the hunt, had the police caught wind that he was here.

A moment later, a great cheer went up in the square before the Hotel, and Shinichi settled in to wait. The stem of the rose pressed delicately against his chest with every gust of wind, but for tonight, at least, he was impervious to the cold. If he had learned nothing else of Kaito, it was that you did not hunt him – which was why, despite their best efforts, the police would never catch him.

You did not hunt him. You out-planned him.

Shinichi smiled once more.

Half an hour passed. And hour. And then, like clockwork, a white shadow landed upon the lip of the concrete roof before Shinichi as a cry of shock went out below. Had Shinichi been listening, he would not have heard the jubilant cries reminiscent of so many past heists, nor the screeches of Nakamori-keibu that he expected. Rather, the shouts that flooded the space left by Kid were ones of despair, of horror, of deep and utter anguish – particularly those of the police department.

Of course, he wasn't listening. Not when Kaito was standing in front of him with a cocky grin, brandishing a small blue rose like a sword, the twin of the one on Shinichi's chest.

'I hoped you'd come,' Kaito breathed, and the whisper managed to drown out all the sirens and the cries and the screams below. 'I didn't imagine you would, though.'

'Of course I would,' Shinichi said, holding still; but there was a great quivering in his limbs that he didn't understand. 'You _did_ invite me.'

Kaito grinned his agreement as he stepped down and folded his glider closed. 'How did you know I would land here? I thought you would have been –'

'At the heist?' Shinichi finished, and grinned back. The surreality of the moment hit him, brief but bright; Kudou Shinichi, formerly Conan Edogawa, formerly famous (well, still-famous) high school detective, sharing a grin with his look-alike rival, the gentlemanly devil, Kaitou Kid.

It faded, though, and he had to fight back for his train of thought, even as the grin slipped away and they just looked at each other. Somewhere in the span of time between his last words and the next, Shinichi noticed the sound of grief from below, and frowned before picking up the thread of the conversation. 'Why would I do that? To see you mock the police force?'

'Of course,' Kaito said after a long moment of his own, before breaking eye contact and turned, looking out over the crowd. 'Well, and to –'

Shinichi's cell rang, loud in the night, and he fished it out of his pocket, flipping it open. Before he could manage a greeting, Haibara was screeching, ' _Are you **seeing** this, Kudou-san!? It's **impossible**_ –'

'Calm down, Ai-chan,' he interrupted, surprised. 'What's going on?'

' _Kaitou Kid just **retired** from thievery!_ **'**

Shinichi froze. Turned to Kaito. Who smirked at him. Mercilessly.

'I'll call you back.'

' _You'll **what?** Kudou Shinichi, if you hang up I'll –_ '

He closed the phone, still staring at Kaito. The grin, under the monocle and the hat, refused to waver. 'Why?' He managed.

'Ah, ah,' Kaito said, wagging a finger. 'Last time you asked that, we didn't see each other for almost a year. Be careful.'

At the moment, Shinichi didn't care. His mind was racing, and after a moment's heavy thought, during which his eyes closed, it came to him. His eyes snapped open again, to see Kaito's grin smaller by the tiniest bit.

'It _was_ , wasn't it,' Shinichi breathed, feeling the spark light his eyes just as it lit Kaito's.

'It was!' Kaito agreed, smiling broadly again.

'It _wasn't_!'

'It really, _really_ was!' Kaito shouted, and spun in a a circle in glee. His hat toppled to the side, his monocle spun off into the night, his cape fell from his shoulders as if it was no more than cloth, and Shinichi danced with him in a sympathetic kind of triumph.

They'd come through it – through it all, through the darkness and the anger and the pain and the loss – Kaito his father, Shinichi his childhood – vengeance for one, healing for the other –

Shinichi didn't know when they had clasped hands, when they begun spinning in dizzy circles and whooping and hollering as if no one could hear them, but he knew when they collapsed to their knees, laughing breathlessly, exuberant and _alive_.

When Kaito leaned forward and kissed him, he almost expected it.

He didn't taste sweet, or sour, or like anything at all; it was warm, and a bit wet, and alive, and afire. 'You still don't understand,' Kaito whispered in the fleeting, breathless moments between contact. 'How much you mean – to everyone and everything here – to the force, to the people –'

He pulled back briefly, eyes shining again, and the muffled whisper, 'You're the _heart_ , Shinichi-kun –' made the riddle disappear, the complex little poem become clear.

Kaitou Kid had not meant the Heart of Japan. He had meant the _heart_ of Japan – one of the heartthrobs, one of the treasures (at least as far as Kaito was concerned.) He had meant _Shinichi_.

Shinichi wasn't sure if he was offended or flattered that he had been stolen so easily.

'Come on,' Shinichi sighed exasperatedly a moment of fire later, pushing himself to his feet and picking up the abandoned blue rose, his rose's twin. He dropped it again in Kaito's lap. 'Let's go to my house and have coffee. Before they catch you.'

The way Kaito bounded up after him was answer enough, in its way, but Kaito being Kaito, he had to push it. 'You won't arrest me yourself?' he asked, and Shinichi turned, and looked at him plainly. Kaito fidgeted under his stare.

'As far as I know,' Shinichi said slowly, 'Kuroba Kaito has done nothing illegal.'

The brightness of Kaito's eyes matched the drowning heat of Shinichi's soul.

 


End file.
